Delhi to Roorkee is almost a five-hour drive passing through Meerut and Muzaffarnagar, cities classified as tier 2 and 3 by soaps and shampoo marketers. The striking feature of the landscape as one crosses Delhi’s outer limits is shiny, glass buildings at regular intervals. A closer look reveals these buildings are colleges and universities. Hundreds of such institutions dot the landscape of India’s crowded highways. At last count, there were 677 universities, 37,204 colleges and 11,443 stand-alone higher education institutions in India.